Ragen Chastain

Recently, Paul Ryan decided that “appropriate attire” for women will exclude sleeveless dresses and open-toed shoes, and pretty soon thereafter, several women reporters were refused entry to the Speaker’s Lobby for showing their arms.

Khloe Kardashian who has been touted as a “body positive” advocate, recently wrote a post called 5 Hacks to Look Thin AF in Your Pics.

As long as the medical community is allowed to make a profit from the promise of thinness, fat people cannot trust them to have our best interests (or even just our continuing to be alive) as a priority. I know exactly where to stick these balloons, and it’s not in the stomachs of fat people.

Fat is not a feeling you have. Fat is a body size you are. Fat people have as many different feelings about our bodies as thin people do. Suggesting that feeling bad about your body means that you are “feeling fat” is fat shaming AF, and it adds to the ceaseless fatphobic messages that permeate our society.

How are kids going to have any chance to develop a lifelong love of movement when we teach them that exercise is either punishment for having a body that is “too big” or something to be done in order to keep kids from looking like their larger classmates?

It’s a dangerous and challenging time for many of us to have a body in the United States. There are things we can do to not only love our bodies but give them our support during the era of the bigoted, fat shaming, twitter tantrum throwing man-baby who is, for now, our president.

One has to wonder what they would have done if they had been trying to do it with a “mean spirit.”

Reinforcing an oppressive sexism system so that you can get what you want is an option, but perhaps not one to be quite so proud of.

In case there are people who need to be told this (and there shouldn’t be) fat shaming kids is never, ever ok. And it does not lead to healthier kids.

Fat people on Instagram have been noticing a disturbing double standard when it comes to supposed “violations” of Instagram's guidelines.